Art Quotes

When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself.

Oscar Wilde, The picture of Dorian Gray

Avarice, envy, pride, Three fatal sparks, have set the hearts of all On Fire.

Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy

There was a disturbance in my heart, a voice that spoke there and said, I want, I want, I want! It happened every afternoon, and when I tried to suppress it it got even stronger.

Saul Bellow, O Magazine, September 2003

Politics is largely a matter of heart.

R. A. Butle

I? m good enough, I? m smart enough, and dog - Gone it, people like me.

Al Franken, Stuart Smalley in Saturday Night Live, catchphrase

Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinions of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth.

Katherine Mansfield

Fill your mind with the meaningless stimuli of a world preoccupied with meaningless things, and it will not be easy to feel peace in your heart.

Marianne Williamson

There is a courtesy of the heart it is allied to love. From it springs the purest courtesy in the outward behavior.

Johann von Goethe

Perfect love is rare indeed - For to be a lover will require that you continually have the subtlety of the very wise, the flexibility of the child, the sensitivity of the artist, the understanding of the philosopher, the acceptance of the saint, the tolerance of the scholar and the fortitude of the certain.

Leo Buscaglia

For the unquiet heart and brain, A use in measured language lies.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

A man has made at least a start on discovering the meaning of human life when he plants shade trees under which he knows full well he will never sit.

D. Elton Trueblood

Just when I think I have learned the way to live, life changes and I am left the same. The more things change the more I am the same. I am what I started with, and when it is all over I will be all that is left of me.

Hugh Prathe

Shame is that intrinsic meter of our own heart to tell us that we have failed to follow our own moral compass.

LaDawnna Burnett, (1975 -), Letters on Ethics

And the wind said May you be as strong as the oak, yet flexible as the birch may you stand as tall as the redwood, live gracefully as the willow and may you always bear fruit all your days on this earth.

Native American Praye

Sticks and stones are hard on bones, aimed with angry art, words can sting like anything but silence breaks the heart.

Phyllis Mcginley

An enormous part of our mature experience cannot not be expressed in words.

Alfred North Whitehead

I find that a great part of the information I have was acquired by looking up something and finding something else on the way.

Franklin P. Adams

The art of conversation consist as much in listening politely, as in talking agreeably.

Atwell

The man who is not a socialist at twenty has no heart, but if he is still a socialist at forty he has no head.

Aristide Briand

The artist belongs to his work, not the work to the artist.

Novalis

We are all Greeks. Our laws, our literature, our religion, our arts, have their root in Greece.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Revolution is not a dinner party, not an essay, nor a painting, nor a piece of embroidery it cannot be advanced softly, gradually, carefully, considerately, respectfully, politely, plainly and modestly.

Mao Zedong

Painting The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather and exposing them to the critic.

Ambrose Bierce

Depend upon it, after all, Thomas, Literature is the most noble of professions. In fact, it is about the only one fit for a man. For my own part, there is no seducing me from the path.

Edgar Allan Poe, From a letter to Frederick W. Thomas (February 14, 1849).

Watergate showed more strengths in our system than weaknesses... The whole country did take part in quite a genuine sense in passing judgment on Richard Nixon.

Archibald Cox

Aesthetic emotion puts man in a state favorable to the reception of erotic emotion. Art is the accomplice of love. Take love away and there is no longer art.

Rmy de Gourmont

People fo privilage will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage.

John Kenneth Galbraith

A kind heart is a fountain of gladness, making everything in its vicinity freshen into smiles.

Washington Irving

Scorching my seared heart with a pain, not hell shall make me fear again.

Edgar Allan Poe, Tamerlane, Part II

Fear grows out of the things we think it lives in our minds. Compassion grows out of the things we are, and lives in our hearts.

Barbara Garrison

Hear me, four quarters of the world - A relative I am Give me the strength to walk the soft earth, a relative to all that is Give me the eyes to see and the strength to understand, that I may be like you. With your power only can I face the winds.

Black Elk

Give not over thy soul to sorrow and afflict not thyself in thy own counsel. Gladness of heart is the life of man and the joyfulness of man is length of days.

Ecclesiastes

A person is always startled when he hears himself seriously called an old man for the first time.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting.

Buddha

To cherish what remains of the Earth and to foster its renewal is our only legitimate hope of survival.

Wendell Berry

Discretion is not the better part of biography.

Lytton Strachey, in Michael Holroyd Lytton, Strachey vol. 1 (1967)

Religion is not what you will get after reading all the scriptures of the world. It is not really what is grasped by the grain. It is a heart grasp.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi